The Tom Hall Award, given by the SCTE (Society of Cable Telecommunication Engineers) to mark outstanding service to the cable industry, has been presented to Italian-born Prof Franco Mussino at a dinner held in the prestigious surroundings of the Houses of Parliament.
The award demonstrates the SCTE’s growing ties with continental Europe, though Prof Mussino has been a member of the Society for over 30 years. He is also the Convenor of the CENELEC working group responsible for developing the standard on System performance of forward paths and the chairman of the Italian National Standards Committee for Cable Distribution Standards.
Two Honorary Fellowships were also presented. The first was given to John Startin, a member of the Society since 1996, and a regular contributor to lecture meetings. The second Fellowship was awarded to Dan Stroie, who has organised SCTE training courses for over 400 students in Romania, and is now working on a similar project in Serbia.
The Technician of the Year was Simon Hill of Virgin Media, whose work on the NTL network has resulted in a sizeable reduction of customer faults, across a footprint of 300,000 customers.
Member of the Year was Virgin Media’s Phil Landeg, who in 1989 joined the Starvision cable television business that his grandfather had sold 25 years previously, and following its sale to Cabletel became part of NTL. Landeg was responsible for some pioneering work in video on demand and most recently has been working on the optimisation of the HFC return path.
